I Knew You'd Be Lovely Part 11

My cell phone goes off, and as soon as I hear her say my name, I know. I'll never get to a place where I don't believe I somehow made it happen, simply by uttering the words. I listen, and tell her I love her, and envision myself wrapping my arms around her, letting her cry into my chest.

"I'll be on the first plane out in the morning," I say, and we discuss whether she should go to the hospital now, or wait, and go to the doctor tomorrow with me. The bleeding has stopped, and she's not in any pain, so we decide the best thing to do is to try to get some sleep.

"Maybe this one just wasn't meant to be," she says.

After we hang up, I go to the unit by the window and shut off the air-conditioning. Immediately the white noise vanishes. If Catherine had been here with me, she'd have done this as soon as we set down our suitcases. Holy quiet, she calls it.

I'm still holding the box, and I think: Fate no longer has me hostage. The choice is mine. I have the power to make the woman I love immeasurably happy. Or I can stick with the status quo. I'd like to say the decision was difficult, but I can't. I feel nothing so much as released, relieved. And I tell myself that since Catherine never knew I bought the ring, I'm not hurting her by returning it.

The next morning, when I buzz Zeb's room, there's no answer. No answer in Deb's room, either. When I go to the front desk to put their tabs on my credit card, I'm told Zeb has checked out, but left a note. Nose broken. Will forward bill for rhinoplasty. On my way back to the elevator, I spot Deb in the lobby.

"What happened?" I say.

"Twenty years of frustration," she says. "Balled into one fist."

"You hit him?"

"Don't be ridiculous. I think he wanted to hit me. But he never hurt me like that, you know? So instead he decked some a.s.shole at the bar who'd been razzing me all night, and the guy up and smashed him. It was as if he was defending my honor or something. It was kind of sweet."

"The two of you saved my life," I say. "If anyone deserved to be punched in the face, it was me."

"It may happen yet," she says, and kisses me on the cheek. A liveried valet arrives and takes one of her bags in each hand. "Give Catherine my love," she says.

I'm not sure what the protocol is for redeeming a pledge, but I'm hoping it doesn't take long, because I have a plane to catch. As I step through the jingle-bell door, the owner of the p.a.w.nshop lifts his eyes from a thick paperback and dips his head in recognition. I finger the black velvet box in the pocket of my Windbreaker. The old man in the tweed jacket is gone.

"What happened to our friend?" I say.

"Moseyed on home."

"Did he find what he was looking for?"

"No." This answer, and the finality with which he delivers it, surprises me.

"How can you be so sure?"

"Percy wants to sell his insulin to buy a canoe. Comes in every week."

"Oh," I say, and find my inner O. Henry wondering if the man who sold his canoe needed the money to buy insulin. I feel bad for old Percy now, and wish he were here, although it's probably better time-wise that he's not.

I put the box on the counter. A speck of amus.e.m.e.nt crosses the owner's face.

"She said no?"

"Cold feet," I say, glancing down. "I'd like to trade back for the sax, if that's all right."

Without hesitating, the owner reaches under the counter and comes up with the case.

"You weren't going to try to sell it?" I say.

"My stepson's graduating from Hillsboro next week. I was planning to give it to him as a graduation present."

I hadn't considered that my failure of will might tamper with more lives than just mine and Catherine's, might muck up the universe in that way you hear about, where one missed bus changes the fate of millions.

"Is he really good?" I say.

"He doesn't play. I thought something like this might inspire him to start." Ah. Well. I'm all for the voodoo of the right instrument, but this golden fish would be wasted on a beginner.

"C'est la vie," the owner says. He opens the box, unfastens the ring from its nest, and sticks a jeweler's loupe in his eye socket.

"You seem to have the right att.i.tude," I say.

"Wanting things too much is a form of sadness," he says.

I examine the underside of the box. "Where'd this ring come from, anyway?"

He pauses, and in that pause I understand two things: The man doesn't lie, and he wouldn't be answering this question if I weren't already returning the ring.

"A newlywed came in," he says. "Her husband died on their honeymoon, and she needed the money to fly his body home to the U.S."

I step back from the counter. "That's the saddest thing I've ever heard," I say.

The owner shrugs. "Give yourself more time."

I feel sorry for him then, and am glad I'll soon be able to leave this place and its forlorn trinkets behind. I apologize, and explain I have a plane to catch. Then I thank him, saying I hope his stepson has a happy graduation and a nice life. He nods, shakes my hand, and stands there as I leave, lanky and dispa.s.sionate. On my way out, I ask him how he does it, working in a place where dreams come to an end.

"I think of it as a place where new dreams begin," he says.

I make it to Nashville International with just minutes to spare, and can't believe my luck when security doesn't pull me aside to search my sax case, the way they did on my way out. As I reach Gate B5, I break into the full sprint I haven't had occasion to use since my high school track days. The plane's air-conditioning hasn't kicked in yet, and I'm lightheaded and breathing heavily when we start down the tarmac. All I know is that leaving the ring behind feels like the right thing to do. As does flying home to Catherine. In fact, as we gain alt.i.tude and the air-conditioning comes on and we break through the clouds, slipping the surly bonds of Earth, all I can think about is the sight of her face.

DOUBLE-BLIND.

Saepe ne utile quidem est scire quid futurum sit.

Often it is not even advantageous to know what will be. -Cicero The day we chose to meet happened to fall on Avery's birthday; perhaps that added to my nervousness. For the first few years after my sister's death, I wouldn't do anything on her birthday. I suppose it was some form of adolescent protest. I let the phone ring, didn't show up to school or work, didn't turn on the computer. Some years, I didn't eat. But after a while it started to feel pointless, and I dropped the hollow exercise. Avery didn't much care what I did when she was alive; why would she care now that she was dead? Still, the date didn't escape my notice, and I wasn't surprised to find its iambic rhythm pulsing through my head as I traveled the walkway, climbed the steps, and pressed Ben's buzzer. November twenty-first.

A bleary-eyed, heavyset redhead answered the door, holding a piece of chalk. I pretended not to notice the enormous sweat marks extending like moist continents from both armpits. He took one look at me and said: "First of all, let's talk about the subatomic world."

This was a blind date-"double-blind," Ben had joked on the phone, when he'd heard I was working as a clinical epidemiologist on my way to a degree in psychology. We were both from the suburbs of Boston, both grad students, and both on shoestring budgets. I'd met his roommate Wolfgang at a costume party at the Design School three weeks earlier and had agreed to let him set me up. I was dressed in black from neck to boots and had pinned bras, socks, underpants, and dryer sheets all over myself. Wolf liked my costume-not the concept so much as the bras. Now the date was turning out exactly the way my mother would have predicted, an object lesson about what happens when a girl leaves the house wearing not only her heart but her panties on her sleeve.

I tried to act natural and offered my hand. It was then that I overheard a voice from inside the house: "That's why you don't give Franco the chalk! You'll never get it back!" Relieved, I realized this was the voice I knew from the phone. Following the voice came a man wearing a s.h.i.+rt with a quote from Nietzsche on it. His hair looked as if it had been styled in a wind chamber, and he was holding a lone chopstick.

"May we help you?" he said.

"Kim," I said. When this still appeared not to register, I added, "We said Thursday the twenty-first, right? You're friends with Wolf?"

"Right," he said, and quickly glanced from me to Franco, then back to me again.

"Does this mean you didn't bring the egg rolls?" Franco said, examining his chalk. Ben seemed torn, as if trying to choose from among several bad alternatives.

"Would you like to come in?" he said finally, prompting an expression of shock from Franco.

"Now?" Franco said. I could have invented a spontaneous migraine, or a sudden bout of narcolepsy, and perhaps I should have. But there was something about Ben that made me want to stay. He had one of those open, inquisitive faces most often seen on babies.

Franco yanked him aside, and with a ridiculous flourish of clandestine urgency, the two held a private powwow three feet away from me. I checked the door lintels for hidden cameras, figuring I must have been on one of those prank TV shows. Girl shows up for blind date. Date pretends to have forgotten and wants to let her in, but prop bystander protests: Now? During the opening rites to dungeon bondage role-play?

As it turned out, it was just like one of those shows, only much, much worse. Ben led me into a room full of strangers, an extremely hot room. Everyone in it was expecting Chinese food, and I didn't have any. I had a bag of Twizzlers in my purse, but I knew it wouldn't suffice; the very air in the room felt possessed of appet.i.te. People were sprawled out everywhere: on the floor, on a Naugahyde couch, and in beanbag chairs. They all looked as if they'd either just woken up or had been drinking since noon. In the center of the room was a two-sided chalkboard, completely covered with drawings and quotations. At first I thought I'd walked in on some sort of Olympic-level game of Pictionary. What I didn't know then was that it was a free-form interdisciplinary brainstorming session, or FIBS, and that it happened the third Thursday of every month.

The point of the exercise, as it was explained to me, was simple: All the partic.i.p.ants were expected to share something interesting about themselves or their field, and whoever's contribution was deemed the most indispensable to life on the planet that night didn't have to pay for his or her share of the takeout. Ben seemed vaguely apologetic as he explained all of this, as if he expected I might laugh myself into an epileptic fit at any moment, and kept taking in my reactions with earnest, searching eyes. But from the standpoint of a dissertation-writing psychology student, it was oddly intriguing, and I was already playing with such phrases as "Jungian impulse" and "tribal mind."

"This is Kim," he told the group, with one hand at my lower back as if I were a specimen. I gave a brief wave from the wrist, a la Miss Ma.s.sachusetts. I expected that what would happen next would be people would go around the room introducing themselves, and I might be offered a gla.s.s of wine or maybe a cracker. Instead, Franco produced a blindfold.

"What's that?"

"What's it look like?"

"An off-duty dust rag. What's it for?"

"You're uninitiated. We have to initiate you," he said. I looked to Ben for rea.s.surance, and he gave me a nod, the way a lion might nod at an antelope.

Franco began securing the bandana around my eyes. It was opaque and smelled like pipe tobacco.

"This seems a little creepy," I said.

"It's just a silly ritual," said a woman's voice. "We all had to do it." The words had the ersatz rea.s.surance of a dentist calmly describing what he's about to do to your teeth.

"If there's going to be a sacrificial offering, I don't mind telling you, I'm not a virgin," I said. n.o.body laughed, except for Franco, who guffawed wildly, which was worse than no one laughing. I wondered if my armpits were on their way to looking like his, then I realized I wasn't actually scared. The room had the odd comfort some great libraries have; it was hot, and populated with strangers, but safe-feeling.

Which was good, because now someone had taken me by the shoulders and was turning me in a circle. When he was done, he let go of me and spoke.

"The goal is to discover things that sound impossible when you first hear them but seem self-evident when you're finished," he said.

A moment later, it was someone else's turn to grab me by the shoulders and play spin-and-speak.

"Failure is not the enemy," he said. "Even the wrong choices can lead you in the right direction."

The next to approach was a woman; I could smell a hint of gingery perfume.

"When dreams come true, they often don't look like you thought they would. Be prepared for that." Was this meant to suggest that my dreams were going to come true tonight? If so, things were going to have to take some drastic turns mighty quickly.

"Those who are given great gifts are also given great obstacles."

"Wherever you are is the entry point."

"Use your intuition. There aren't many things that aren't best done intuitively." I wasn't sure suspension bridges were best built intuitively, but I held my tongue.

"The greatest truths are those whose opposite is also true." This from a man whose voice sounded a lot like Ben's. I considered an investigatory pawing of his face, but before I could act, it was someone else's turn.

This went on for about twenty minutes, each person in the group standing up, rotating me, then telling me something the likes of which you might expect to see on the b.u.mper sticker of a flying car. I don't know if they had these things written out on index cards, or what. All I knew was that if they asked me to take the special pink drink, I wasn't drinking.

Finally: "Don't be constrained by past thinking or seemingly immutable laws. Remember the flight of the b.u.mblebee."

"According to the laws of physics, b.u.mblebees can't fly!" someone-probably not a physicist-blurted out. I'd had enough. I was thirsty, I was hot, I was tired of wearing some grad student's do-rag around my head. I'd heard of bad first dates, but this was a whole new universe of unexplored badness.

"Exactly what law of physics does the flight of the b.u.mblebee contravene?" I said.

An indecipherable murmur moved through the room. "We'll get to your questions in a moment," said a deep, resonant voice. The cinematic portion of my brain pictured James Earl Jones sitting on a stool in the corner with a steaming cup of tea. "But first: Is there anything you wish to add to the collective knowledge of the group?"

The room went silent. I hesitated, but I didn't panic. I knew how to play games like this. My entire life was a game like this.

"A pigeon's feathers are heavier than its bones," I said. A risky bit of wisdom, and one I'd picked up from the alcoholic vagabond who haunted the Au Bon Pain in Harvard Square, true. But it seemed the sort of nugget this crowd could take to the bank. The next thing I knew, a sinewy, pungent mathematician was untying me. The first thing I saw was his s.h.i.+rt, which was covered with rows and rows of pi: 3.1415926.

535897932.

384626433.

832795028.

841971693.

993751058.

209749445.

"You're in," he said.

"That was weird," I said. Ben and I were at the Middle East, a late-night coffeehouse in Central Square, where he'd just ordered an Irish coffee, a drink I've always considered to be a waste of all three ingredients.

He c.o.c.ked his head.

"What?" I said.

"Nothing. It's just that I've made a conscious decision not to use the word weird anymore."

"That's weird," I said. "And this is because ..."

"Everything is weird. Quantum superposition is weird. Electromagnetism is weird. Supersymmetric flip is weird. My parents have a friend who's allergic to snow. My neighbor is convinced that the Earth's weather patterns were fine until we punctured the atmosphere by flying into outer s.p.a.ce."

"Your neighbor may win the n.o.bel Prize some day," I said, and took a sip of my hot chocolate. Ben's face brightened.

"My landlady," he said, "is convinced I'm stealing the fresh lightbulbs she puts in the hallway lamps and replacing them with my old ones."